I recently picked up a Zenith VP2000 CED player. Got it along with 6 disks for next to nothing at an auction. Surprisingly, 4 of the disks still have original shrinkwrap on them and have never been opened!
Before I picked this up, I had no clue about CED. All I knew was that it existed and I had seen a few disks out and about before(like in thrift or antique shops). I didnt know they had such a short production run and that in the short time put out 1700 different titles! Very interesting history about them.

Well, onto my player. I found that it does work, and watched one of the movies on it. My "new" Zenith tracks very well and doesn't skip, but I did notice that it blips around a lot. It will lose focus, then come back looking sharp. The whole screen will occasionally blip as well and throws the tv off into a vertical roll and restabilize itself. All while doing this the color flips around a lot too. Sometimes it looks as if it reversed the color, go into a rainbow pattern or even just go b&w. Then back to normal.

I've since taken the machine apart and cleaned and re-oiled the turntable spindle, oiled the stylus slider bar and checked over the belts. Looking at them they seem fine. Still having the same problems though.
I'm thinking of doing the strobe test, to see if my problems are from un-even speed or something else. I've read online that uneven speed can cause the color problems but I don't know about the rest, that its dealing with

Well, I did my "strobe" test and have some odd results. I DON'T need a belt.

Turns out, that the player plays very close to correct speed. It is just going slightly faster. I have to really stare and study it while it's running to notice that its fast.
Here's my problem though(and it coincides with my video problem): Every 6 seconds it speeds up a lot faster then returns, to it's "normal". You can even hear it speed up(with the rumble the player makes).

What causes this and how do I fix it? I read somewhere about it needing a synchronization adjustment, but I have no clue how to go about doing that... Or if the problem is even with that, or the unit just needing some new components(capacitor?).

Actually, i've looked all that over a number of times and didn't find my problem/solution in the list.
BUT, the list did point me to the possibility of speed problems and is the reason why I tore it apart and cleaned the platter's spindle and re-oiled it...along with some other maintenance I did.

I haven't messed with anything on the component boards yet, and it seems to be good that I didn't. Nothing looks bad-I know looks aren't good to go by...

Doing some experimenting, I found that it plays perfect with the right side up in the air at a 10* angle. Had it sitting on a couple books like that and played a movie for half an hour with absolutely no blips.

So, anything I can do without the alignment tool? or should I stick to running this thing with the right side propped up to play CED's on it?

Actually, yes I am. Not a professional, but I work on a wide variety of stuff with success. (Some things w/ a lot of help from websites such as this, or from diagrams/schematics)

I had it all in pieces, performed some maintenance, and put together how it should go. I read somewhere(I don't remember where anymore) that I need to find some alignment tool and get things in perfect balance.

It's been a good while now since I read about it, but I think that it uses a magnetic system with the platter and an electromagnet that is either on the inside or right outside the edge of the platter in the player. It uses these to keep it synced and to run at a governed speed.
I've read that if it's "out of whack" it can cause the exact problem I'm experiencing. Only way to fix is to get this (apparently) ultra rare tool. So, I guess I'm screwed.

Despite that, I finally found some more CED's to add to the small collection. Well, some that actually interest me. I have found a few since I got this little player collection, but they were of subjects I wasn't interested in or a half to a 2 disc set.